“How little you do know of what is going on, to be sure!” cried the father. “Why, the last work on theological morality, printed at Paris this very year, speaks of the Mohatra, and learnedly, too. It is called _Epilogus Summarum_, and is an abridgment of all the summaries of divinity—extracted from Suarez, Sanchez, Lessius, Fagundez, Hurtado, and other celebrated casuists, as the title bears. There you will find it said, at p. 54, that ‘the Mohatra bargain takes place when a man who has occasion for twenty pistoles purchases from a merchant goods to the amount of thirty pistoles, payable within a year, and sells them back to him on the spot for twenty pistoles ready money.’ This shows you that the Mohatra is not such an unheard-of term as you supposed.” “But, father, is that sort of bargain lawful?” “Escobar,” replied he, “tells us in the same place, that there are laws which prohibit it under very severe penalties.” “It is useless, then, I suppose?” “Not at all; Escobar, in the same passage, suggests expedients for making it lawful: ‘It is so, even though the principal intention both of the buyer and seller is to make money by the transaction, provided the seller, in disposing of the goods, does not exceed their highest price, and in re-purchasing them does not go below their lowest price, and that no previous bargain has been made, expressly or otherwise.’ Lessius, however, maintains, that ‘even though the merchant has sold his goods, with the intention of re-purchasing them at the lowest price, he is not bound to make restitution of the profit thus acquired, unless, perhaps, as an act of charity, in the case of the person from whom it has been exacted being in poor circumstances, and not even then, if he cannot do it without inconvenience—_si commode non potest_.’ This is the utmost length to which they could go.” “Indeed, sir,” said I, “any further indulgence would, I should think, be rather too much.”